


elevate

by cave_canem



Series: magic in your veins [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, this is it guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 03:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: Andrew kisses him on the rooftop under a clouded sky.





	elevate

The first time they touch, Neil feels it down to his core.

His magic is entirely gone, like water pressed out of a sponge. Something buzzes under his skin: residual magic or something else, older and more complicated, perhaps.

Andrew is sitting cross-legged on the roof next to him, his face dark and inaccessible, unusual in its intensity. He’s looking right at Neil, but his eyes are heavy with feeling Neil can’t understand. His hand is callused, the pads rough under Neil’s fingertips. His black armbands extend under the sleeves of his coat; Neil, suddenly yearning to reach and touch, restrains himself.

“Andrew,” Neil starts.

It breaks the spell. Andrew buries back his feelings under his mask of blankness, retreating his hand. Neil’s hover in the air for a moment before he lowers it as well, curling his fingers until his nails bit into the skin. It settles him enough that he can turn back to Andrew, watch him take a long drag of his nearly extinct cigarette.

His magic is still hindered by Andrew’s suppressing abilities but the swooping feeling in his stomach disappears. It’s overwhelming, and as he stares out at the sun rising over the city line, Neil finds himself out of breath, like he’s been running all this time.

Neil is used to the emptying feeling of his powers being taken away. With Andrew, it doesn’t feel draining: a gentle give and take rather than the violence of being robbed.

He suspects it goes both ways. Andrew is silent and tense next to him, a brutal storm contained where it can only hurt one of them.

“Go,” Andrew says after a while.

He puts out his cigarette butt against the concrete and immediately lights up a new one. Neil recognizes the signs of his agitation: he goes willingly and wordlessly.

* * *

“I told you my father was after me,” Neil says a few days later. “But I didn’t tell you the entire truth.”

This time night has completely fallen. It’s cold on the roof, the wind blowing the smell of rain to come. Neil can imagine the sound of the drops hitting the concrete one by one next to him, the color of Andrew’s hair darkening from the water even in the dark. He extends his legs in the air in front of him. For a wild second, he feels like he has a grip on his magic, another form of power and energy he has never known before.

“How surprising,” Andrew says. “A pathological liar who keeps the truth to himself.”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you to keep the secret.”

“I’m the man keeping you alive, Josten.”

Neil hums. “Now I know, so I’ll tell you.”

“No.”

Despite his rebuttal, Andrew doesn’t sound angry. They’ve been playing their game of truth long enough that he knows that Neil has kept secrets to himself.

“No?”

“I don’t have anything to give you in exchange,” Andrew says.

“I don’t have to take my turn yet.”

“A truth on credit?”

“Unless you don’t want to play anymore.”

“I don’t.” Andrew takes a swig of the alcohol bottle sitting next to him on the ledge. “One question. I’ll keep playing for one other question.”

Neil nods. Andrew lifts the bottle to his mouth but doesn’t drink: force of habit rather than intent.

“You’ve seen the way the busybodies react to my powers. Why do you look like you’re used to having your magic suppressed?”

Neil almost smiles. He looks up to the dark sky, trying to make out stars from the deep layer of clouds, but it’s no use because of the pollution.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” he says, and he sees Andrew’s hand twitch on the neck of the bottle. “My mother ran away with me from my father. She had family in the United Kingdom, so we flew there first, moved around. They caught up with us in England.” Neil closes his eyes. “We eventually figured they were tracing my magic, like Riko with Kevin.”

“You wore a lead suppressor,” Andrew says, putting the bottle away. “They can’t trace your magic if it’s locked away.”

“For nine years straight,” Neil says.

Andrew goes right for Neil’s neck, pulling down his neckline after his nod of assent. His fingers press against the mark on Neil’s collarbone, evenly round. Lead magic suppressors are rare and unrefined; the best way to use them is skin contact, but their powers take a toll on the wearer. After years of uninterrupted contact, they start gnawing away, magically and physically. Neil threw away the pendant the day he moved in with the Foxes, but the scar is there.

Andrew’s skin against his is electrifying. The rush of energy leaving his body leaves Neil almost drunk. Somehow, the distance Andrew puts between them when he retracts his fingers doesn’t lessen the sensation

* * *

Andrew kisses him on the rooftop under a clouded sky. The weather is bad enough that they feel alone in the world, two solitary figures standing small on top of a deserted city. Without magic, neither of them can feel the other people around. That’s what Andrew looks for when he comes up here, Neil supposes: that liberating void of feeling truly alone.

Andrew kisses like he touches: firmly but gently, a pressure after a question.

Only their lips are touching but the contact is enough to take Neil’s breath away. That particular energy he’s always associated with Andrew rather than with the suppression of his powers course through his body and it’s like a switch in his brain: _this_ is what it is.

Andrew draws back too soon, but Neil is out of breath all the same. He looks at Neil with too dark eyes and asks him, “Tell me no.”

It’s probably better for the both of them if Neil does. The thing is, he doesn’t want to.

“Yes,” Neil says.

He doesn’t reach when Andrew shifts away, considering, but he holds Andrew’s gaze and answers yes, again and again, every time he asks.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting the last part tomorrow so have this one before. It's beautiful. I cry.
> 
> Hmu @[jsteneil](http://jsteneil.tumblr.com/post/179590718796/magic-in-your-veins-part-iii-elevate) on tumblr.


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